Nov 19 2006
I’m back!
October was a really full month and went by really fast. I’ll be uploading my pictures pretty soon, but in the meantime, here’s an idea of what happened.
We took the train to Ko Samui. The beach was amazing and our little bungalows were right on the water. We biked around the island one day and got to go kayaking too.
As Steph and I were leaving Ko Samui to head to Phuket to fly to Malaysia, I tripped and fell on the pier. You’d think that it’d be fine, but I sliced a huge chunk off of my toe and have been to 4 hospitals since.
Malaysia was amazing! I love Kuala Lumpur! It was a really nice and chill city. We saw the Petronus Towers and fell in love with the food in Little India. We also visited our first Mosque.
Steph and I are fanatics about tea, which explains why we would spend 7 hours in a freezing cold bus on horribly windy roads to spend an hour and a half having afternoon tea at a real tea plantation in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia. That’s right, a real plantation. It was better than Disney World.
Back to Bangkok, and the new airport is amazing, even if their overpriced taxi policy stinks.
Jesse and I left for our volunteer club trip to what we thought was Chiang Mai by train. It was actually just in the Chiang Mai province - a 16 hour 3rd class train ride follwoed by 6+ hours in the back of a big truck that held about 45 people. Nice…
The volunteer trip was wonderful! We stayed with a family in a small hill tribe village (which turned out the be Christian!) and a lot of them did not speak Thai. We built a room for the school. It’s really adorable with the children and flowers we painted on the side. We made a ton of new friends. Jesse harvested rice one day, and I learned to weave a purse (really hard).
Instead of going straight back to Bangkok, we split up the trip home by staying in Chiang Mai for 2 nights with Steph and her mom. We rode elephants and got to play with a baby elephant at the elephant nursery!
Next was Sukothai, an ancient capital of Thailand. We stayed in a traditional teak house, which was really cool. We rode our bikes around the ruins and then bought little kratongs for the Loi Kratong festival (for the full moon). A kratong is a small little boat (or float) made of banana leaves and flower that holds a candle and incense. The lake at Sukothai was full of little lights from the boats; it was gorgeous. We also bought a little hot air ballon made of paper. We lit the paper underneath, and as it filled up with air it floated into the sky. They stay lit for a long time. It was great! I bought another teapot…
After another long bus ride we arrived back in Rangsit to celebrate Loi Kratong again, but this time it was at Thammasat with all of our friends.
I had minor surgery on my toe yesterday. It was awful. I’m in pain. They cut off part of my toenail and part of my toe which nad not healed correctly. They gave me two shots in my toe to numb it. I have never had a shot hurt, but that was horrible. Jesse let me squeeze his hand (and cry). Apparently I’m allergic to vicodine. I found that one out this morning around 4 am, when, for the second time, I got really, really sick from it. It’s scary; my body goes all numb, shaky, and tingly and my arms start cramping, my hands tighten and cramp and I can’t loosen them and I was burning up and shivering. I have to go back to Bumrungrad Hospital today for a check up. Atleast it’s a nice hospital. I get service immediately and they are very attentive and the place is just really nice. If I ever get hurt again I’m flying right back to Thailand.
5 and a half weeks left - that’s pretty crazy! Thank you to everyone for all of your prayers and kind words to me about my grandmother. It really means more than you know.
Now I have to look into reapplying to Tech…
If you commented on this article and now it’s gone, I’m sorry. It’s because my site was spammed.